FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Boston Mountain Lookout

Nez Perce NF lookout: a 1931 60-foot pole tower with a log cabin, destroyed in 1958. No source describes what remains today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1958. No source describes what remains on the site.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower60-foot pole L-6 tower with a log cabinThe design: L-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.64537, −115.18903
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-boston-mountain

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.7 MB of terrain data the first time.

Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.

History

Then and now

  1. 1931 Built60-foot pole L-6 tower with a log cabin; an earlier crow's nest dates to the 1920s (no year given)Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  2. No record between 1931 and 1958
  3. 1958 DestroyedBoth lookout-history pages date the destruction to 1958Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

Old maps of this spot

USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Boston Mountain Lookout stood about 17 miles southeast of Elk City, in Idaho County, on the Nez Perce National Forest.1,2 The site is listed at 7,648 feet.1

The first structure was a crow's nest from the 1920s.1 In 1931 a 60-foot pole tower with an L-6 design and a log cabin was built.1,2

The lookout was destroyed in 1958.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list marks the tower as gone.3 One page complicates the picture: it says the older crow's nest was still there in the 1980s, yet it also dates the destruction to 1958. It does not say which structure the 1958 loss refers to.1

No source we read says what, if anything, stands on the site today, or whether visitors can reach it.1 Idaho Fire Lookouts files the site under hike-in.2

  1. Boston Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://www.firelookout.com/id/bostonmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Boston Mountain Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/boston-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: links firelookout.com · No licence stated on the site; facts only (coordinates, elevation, built/destroyed years, design, agency). Photos mirrored with the site's stated credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: links idahofirelookouts.com · No licence stated; facts only (coordinates, status/built/destroyed year parsed from each entry's short excerpt). Thumbnail photos mirrored with credit per the project's photo policy. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, visiting details, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story

More about this lookout elsewhere

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.